Thanks to its acquisition of Bluefin Labs, the micro-blogging service now has the ability to closely monitor shared content in order to gain a reference point for television programming. The program works even if a user doesn’t explicitly reference the name of the TV show they just watched. [Read more…]

Earlier in the month, it was announced that Twitter employees were currently testing the Twitter two-factor authentication setup. The tests began after several high profile accounts including Burger King and The Associated Press were hacked and disturbing messages were posted to their accounts.

There are some limitations to the type of two-factor authentication being used. Specifically, many high-profile account users have multiple workers who access their Twitter account. Because two-factor authentication relies on an SMS text message to a single smartphone, it won’t work for multiple users. [Read more…]

Twitter launched Twitter #Music about a fortnight ago, a new service and app to discover new artists and music through Twitter. The system uses a platform which was acquired last year by Twitter, oWeAreHunted, but has been refined and expanded through integration with Spotify and Rdio, two large music streaming services.

Currently, the system extracts songs from iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio, but other sources will be added in the future. By default, users can only listen to short snippet of songs – 30 seconds – directly from iTunes but for Rdio and Spotify, you will need to use your credentials to log in. Based on the recent acquisition of “We Are Hunted” by Twitter, the system will help us to discover new songs and artists based on custom criteria, including the artists followed by us or our followers. [Read more…]

Twitter on Tuesday announced that it is opening its self-serve advertising platform to all users in the United States.

The Twitter self-serve platform allows account administrators to run their own campaigns by promoting accounts or individuals Tweets to specific groups within the social network. Advertisers can also track the results of their campaigns via Twitter analytics.

The self-serve platform provides pay for engagement activities which includes favorites, replies, and retweets.

Twitter started the advertising platform as an invite-only option. Twitter used feedback to adjust the platform before taking it live. [Read more…]

When Twitter cut off Instagram from its API there were questions about the effect the move would have on Twitter. As it turns out the shutdown hurt Twitter’s quarter-over-quarter engagement per photo fell, while Instagram’s own engagement increased by 30 percent.

While Twitter has put a lot of stock in the Twitter Cards system, specifically Twitter Photo Cards, it turns out that most users would rather click on a link to view Instagram photos.

The team at Column Five visualized the entire shift from Twitter to Instagram in a new infographic. Column Five worked with Simply Measured in February 2013 to determine the shift caused by the Twitter shut down of Instagram.

What Column Five and Simply Measured discovered was that engagement with brands since that time has grown by 35% on Instagram while brand follower count grew by 41%.

They also offer some helpful tips for tracking your social media photo sharing, for example, use Instagram for photo sharing on Facebook to increase engagement.

If you want to increase Twitter engagement you need to upload pictures directly to the Twitter photo sharing system and not through Instagram.

“With over half a billion users, it’s no surprise that Twitter has its fair share of awful tweeters.”

The company specifically examined eleven awful tech tweeter types. From “know-it-all developers” who attempt to always look brilliant, to eventaholic Twitter users who brag about all the cool events they are attending, the group really hits the nail on the head. [Read more…]

Twitter has rolled out a new embed feature for its Vine platform. Users can now choose to embed Vine’s based on three different sizes. The company also unveiled stronger Facebook and Twitter sharing options.

In a company blog post co-founder and general manager Dom Hofmann writes:

“When we launched Vine, we described posts as ‘little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life.’ With today’s update, you can display them almost anywhere.” [Read more…]